


Why Won't They Love Me?

by RoseLaflesh



Series: Learning to Dance [5]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Amethyst trying to be a good girlfriend, Another fan fiction about fan fictions, Cute, F/F, Fluff, Self Aware, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-26
Updated: 2016-09-26
Packaged: 2018-08-17 08:50:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8137876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoseLaflesh/pseuds/RoseLaflesh
Summary: Peridot tries her hand at writing her own fan fictions. However, she discovers the frustrations of waiting for attention.





	

**Author's Note:**

> What? No, of course this has nothing to do with me. This is solely my head cannon of how Peridot would react to posting her creative works online and is not drawn from personal experience at all. Don't say such silly things straw-man I just happen to have.
> 
> Also, if you didn't catch it in the last story, Our Own Fun is parody of AO3. Although I'm not sure if you get alerted when a message has been removed since that's never happened to me, but for the sake of story, let's say they do. I've been in a very creative mood lately, so that's why you're getting a new story so soon.

“Okay, now you’re all set up,” Steven proclaims.

“Wow, thanks!” Peridot said as she looked over her new Our Own Fun account.

Peridot had struggled to get an account until Steven helped her. It turned out that signing up was painfully simple. While the site was by invitation only, getting an invitation was as simple as putting an email on a wait list, and waiting. But the week of patience and daily pestering of Steven paid off and now Peridot was officially an O3F member. As Peridot played with her new account, subscribing to stories that were ongoing, Amethyst came out of the temple.

“Look!” Peridot said, shoving the tablet into Amethyst’s face, “I now have an Our Own Fun account. If you want to find my account, I’m ShiningStones.” She gave Amethyst a seductive wink. 

“That’s great, Perry. Are you going to write some stories too?” 

Peridot’s eyes went wide. “I haven’t thought about that. I really could, couldn’t I? I could show the entire human race what a real Percy and Pierre story looks like. I could write it, and they will love me!” She said and imagined her story being flooded with views and Hurrahs.

“That’s sounds awesome, Peridot,” Steven said.

“Yes, it will be, and I shall call it…” Peridot paused to think of a title, “I don’t quite know yet.”

“You can try writing it first,” Amethyst suggested.

“Good idea. Now if you excuse me, I’m off to write a masterpiece.” Peridot let out a triumphant laugh as she walked to the warp pad and disappeared in a flash of light.

“I hope people will like her work,” Steven said.

“Eh, how bad can it be?” Amethyst shrugged.

Peridot worked the rest of the day, night and half of the next day on her story. She had reached thirty thousand words and fifteen chapters before she was ready to start uploading. It was a very steamy slow burn that Peridot felt showed exactly why Percy and Pierre were the ultimate couple and will ultimately rule the camp together.

She warped back to the temple to take advantage of the stronger Internet connection so that she could upload the first chapter of her story, which she decided to title, “It all Started with Pierre,” after the first line. Peridot was so intent on getting her story to the public, she didn’t even return Steven’s greeting when she arrived.

Steven left her alone and returned to his book while Peridot filled out all the information. She was careful in the tags to be informative but without spoilers like how Percy and Pierre join forces to put an end to Paulette’s reign of terror, and finished it off by copying the first chapter and pasting it where it belongs. And post.

She looked at her work with pride. Finally standing where it belongs, where everyone can see. She looked up at the views counter. It said zero, but that’s okay, after all, the site did mention how it can take a few minutes for a story to become live. She stared at it for ten minutes before hitting the refresh button. The counter then said two, but that’s okay. Perhaps it takes a while to register all the people reading her story.

Peridot stared at the screen for hours, hitting refresh every few minutes. The view counter hardly changed beyond the occasional jump of three or four people, and the even less occasional Hurrah.

“Uh, Peridot?” Steven said, taking her attention away from the site, “Me and Amethyst are going to the arcade. Do you want to come along?”

“Why isn’t anyone reading it?” Peridot cried out.

“What?”

“My story. It’s been up for five hours now and barely more than fifty people have read it and only two left Hurrahs. Surely there should be people flocking to my story.”

“Maybe people don’t know it’s there yet. Give it time.”

Peridot let out a deep breath. “You’re right.” She got up with tablet in hand.

“Maybe you should leave that here so you’re not tempted to look at it,” Steven suggested.

“Good idea,” Peridot said, not sounding all that convinced, but she set the tablet down on the couch anyway.

The time at the arcade was fun, but Peridot couldn’t help wonder how many people have seen her story by now, and how many Hurrahs it’s gotten. She could barely focus on the games and lost nearly all of them to Amethyst and Steven.

“Okay, Percy, what’s up,” Amethyst finally asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve been spacey this entire time.”

“I’m not spacey. I’m right here on Earth.”

“Ya-huh, and that’s why your character has been walking into a wall for the past little bit.”

Peridot blinked and focused on the fighting game she and Amethyst were playing. Sure enough her character was almost dead and pinned to the wall.

“Oh, right,” She turned the character around and hit the punch button, but missed and Amethyst finished her off with a kick.

“So what’s wrong?”

“Wrong? Nothing other than the fact that hardly anyone’s read my story!”

“Oh, come on, why should you care what a bunch of strangers on the internet think?”

“Did you read it?”

“Of course. I really liked that part where Pierre punched a beaver.”

“Did you get the symbolism?”

“Of course I did. You’re writing’s great and any loser who can’t see that isn’t worth the effort.” Amethyst gave Peridot a pat on the back. “Now come on, I want to kick your butt for real this time. No holding back.”

“Got it.” Peridot tried to fake the enthusiasm, but as much as she tried to convince herself otherwise, she still wanted to know if anyone else has read her story.

When they returned to the temple, the first thing Peridot did was open up her tablet and refresh her page to see how many more people had read her story. In the two hours they were gone, only ten more people had viewed her work, one of them left a Hurrah and there was a comment.

“Interesting story.”

“Yes!” Peridot cried, “Someone commented. Look, they think it’s interesting.”

“That’s great, Peridot,” Steven said.

“Yeah, way to go,” Amethyst added.

Their enthusiasm waned as they watched Peridot fall back to constantly refreshing the page.

“Peridot, you know, a watched pot never boils.” Steven set his hand on the tablet and tried to get Peridot to set it down.

“What does that suppose to mean?”

“He means,” Amethyst explained, “That you obsessing over how many people are reading your story is not going to change anything.”

“Your right. I need to be more proactive in getting more views. Maybe I need to post the next chapter. That way it will go back to the top of the results list and more people will be able to find it, after all, that’s probably why all the most popular stories are all long works that have been going on for ages despite having a low view to Hurrah ratio.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Amethyst said.

Peridot wasn’t listening. She was too busy updating her story and leaving a witty comment in the notes. “There, done. Now they’ll have to notice my story.”

Peridot refreshed again, but the view count held steady. 

“How about you read some other stories and give the refresh button a rest,” Amethyst suggested, “It’s not like people are magically going to show up if you hit it enough times.”

Peridot sighed. “You’re right.”

“Or you can watch movies with us. We’re going to binge through the full Lonely Blade series to get ready for the new one that’s coming into theaters next week,” Steven offered.

“Uh,” Peridot looked between the tablet and her girlfriend, “That’s alright. I’ll stick with the fan fictions, thank you.”

“Suit yourself,” Amethyst said.

Peridot made herself comfortable on the couch while Steven gathered up the rest of the crystal gems to watch the movie. As Peridot read another Percy/Pierre fluff piece, an idea popped into her head.

“Great story,” She commented on the last chapter, “If you really like Percy/Pierre stories, you should totally check mine out.” And she left a link to her story.

She read a few more stories before she could no longer resit the urge to check the stats of her account. Upon reaching the dashboard, she noticed a message in her inbox. Excited that it might be another comment on her story, she checked it out.

“They deleted by comment!” Peridot shouted at the screen.

“What?” Pearl asked, not sure what was going on.

“They deleted my comment because I posted a link to my story on it.”

“I got this,” Amethyst said as she jumped down onto the couch and sat next to Peridot.

Peridot sat her head on Amethyst’s shoulder and gently cried. “Why won’t they love me?”

“Hey, you can’t beat yourself up over some losers on the Internet. I bet those people don’t even have a life. They probably spend all their time reading and writing fan fictions while they live with their grandparents because their parents kicked them out for sitting around doing nothing.”

“But I wrote this story for those losers, and no one even notices.”

“Hey,” Amethyst said softly as she wrapped Peridot in a hug, “I noticed.”

“You don’t count,” Peridot grumbled.

“Well then I’ll make sure I do,” Amethyst whispered in her ear. “Hey, Steven, can I borrow your lap top? I want to read the new chapter of Peridot’s story.”

“Why do you need Steven’s lap top? Can’t you just read it off Peridot’s computer there?” Pearl asked.

“Yeah, but then it won’t count as a view,” Amethyst said as Steven handed his lap top over.

As Amethyst read over the next chapter, Peridot busied herself with refreshing the page again and again. The site registered that Amethyst was reading the story, but there were no new views or Hurrahs beyond that. Suddenly a new message appeared in her inbox. Peridot internally groaned. It was probably going to be another notification telling her that another one of her comments had been removed by the user. She checked anyway.

It was a comment on her story. Someone named RockHead wrote, “I love you.”

Amethyst leaned over and kissed Peridot on the forehead. The computer screen leaned over with her showing RockHead’s user account. “Does that count?” She whispered.

“Close enough,” Peridot said, repaying Amethyst’s kiss with one on the mouth.

“Why don’t you two get a room,” Garnet said with a big grin on her face.

“Why don’t you shut up!” Peridot shouted back and returned to kissing the gem she loved.


End file.
